A glimpse of Qingdao downtown. [Photo by Zhang Zhirui]

The biggest holiday hotel in northern China saw its foundation laid in the city’s Lingshanwan in Jiaonan on May 30.

The hotel complex, named Mangrove Resort Hotel, is designed to cover a floor area of 460,000 square meters and has over 4,000 rooms. It belongs to Mangrove chain, which also owns China’s first seven-star hotel in Sanya, Hainan.

Beijing Antaeus Group is to invest 6 billion yuan (US$880 million) in the new hotel, which is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2012.